How The Astronauts Became Known As Gods
The stories told of ancient beings so powerful that they could fling themselves into space and explore the points of light in the heavens. When Lady Adelaide moved into one of their unused crafts, many called it blasphemy. She called it research. Concert By Lauren Davis Proposals PV Elsa asked, curious and awestruck: "It never launched?" "No." The drone Ilis said, while the scout pondered the ship's existence. "And believe me, everything that could launch did. Not that it helped much." Ilis flew around the ship a few times, "The stories from back then tell how a group of people managed to put her back together from mothball parts, museum pieces, and languishing tech from the Golden Age. Before the great fires, before the Shadow of Oolus, before the last Illus was carved into steaks by the Dragons of Erebus, they had hoped they could escape. There were forty or so, who were to have gone into orbit, retrieve the Spectre of Eternity, and rescue the thousands that still remained. "Your ancestors, Elsa." Ilis remarked, "They wanted to retrieve the last Marathon Class Ship... that anyone ever knew of. It had remained there, waiting, for someone to call upon her to do her duty." The drone came close, "Sadly, it was never meant to be, and thus, you are here." And Ilis moved off a short distance, "And so am I." "I refuse to believe all is lost. There must be something!" Elsa said, hissing out the last words. "This ship will never fly again." Ilis commented, "But it isn't the only one." Elsa straightened herself on her mount, "Tell me what I have to do." bittlebittle So to me the planet depicted here is definitely not earth, but maybe an early outpost? My feeling is that the craft landed thousands of years ago when the people were still very much primitive. The rocket served as shelter and object of worship, and when those first astronauts were picked up, the antiquated rockets were left abandoned on the planet. Giving rise to a religion that half remembers its gods coming and going from the sky. Verb-a-noun I remember hearing Father Ramsay read scripture in Sunday school. Specifically, the story about the star that fell from the heavens. The prophets foretold its coming — it was going to rain down and black out the sky, turn the seas into steam and kill the vegetation. The prophets were going to ride fire up into the sky to stop it from happening and save humanity, but they were too late. And it happened exactly like they said it would. I have been blessed. I crossed the desert and found the prophets' temple. It stood at the edge of the ocean, towering miles high. And when I climbed up to the tomb, I found the prophets themselves still inside. Some people say the temple can still save us from our sins — the prophets were simply too early before. I found more scripture, straight from the prophets themselves. Now to simply figure out how to "launch" and "deploy payload." The temple's healing blast will save humanity from its sins. Blakkar The thing about playing with time is we aren't able to perceive time like we do normal space. So, when some well-meaning, but unprepared scientists pressed their button, everything that was humanity scattered forward in time. I say forward, according to how we perceive time, and that if modern humans were cast in the past everything should be more advanced, not 10,000 years of Earth after humanity. Maybe not 10,000 years, for me and a few tens of thousands of survivors. More and more appearing every few months of years. With no one to maintain the power plants and waste disposal, the Earth was largely ruined in a lot of areas. This one was no different. Apparently it was ruined then recovered. It was desert for a while. A space shuttle in the distance was half buried in what became dirt and the first stages of limestone. Some vegetation growing up around it. Looks like a mountain with the ship half carved out of it. With reports of... I should mention we were able to get a pre-orbital communications system going. We have radio. Anyway, with reports of hominid animals, mostly predators hunting for food, we have to be very careful and quick. If I can get into the shuttle I will have shelter for the next few days while I try to figure out what he can get out of these ship. The thing is as big as a building. My fear is it may be home to a pack of lupus erectus, "werewolves", they aren't friendly to humans, and are smart enough to give Humans a really difficult tome and can use tools, even guns... Last Year one of our scouting troupes was razed by a large pack, we call "the Ghosts", because that always strike at night, and most of them are shock white. White as fresh sheets and we still can't see them until they are standing right next to us... Of all the wolf packs out there the Ghosts are the scariest and almost unstoppable. The techies can't get those night vision, infrared scanners, and motion detectors working soon enough. It's a pretty depressing. To me, the accident that scattered humanity forward happened in the year 2107. We have... had thriving space colonies and lunar bases. The much fabled ISS was reconfigured into a full-blown space dock to launch the first "warp ships" capable of 1000 times light speed. A huge jump over the last generation of ships that topped out about 15 times light. Almost 25% of humanity had willingly left Earth for space, with colonies in several star systems. But every one of them is gone. Or maybe they evacuated the system for fear of what happened on Earth happening to them. So we don't have space humans to rescue us and we were haplessly flung INTO a stone age. But we are clawing our way out... In the last few decades, we have what I understand is circa 1930's technology... And we still don't have any kind of motorized transportation... Not even an internal combustion engine, forget fuel for it. My grandfather had a Thompson D-22 sport sedan, Wave-12 engine, hydrogen burner. 1500hp and almost that much torque. Thing cost as much a large houses, sounded like P-waves through solid rock running flat out, got a pathetic 88 miles per gallon, but it was still fun as getting a root canal wasn't. Hydrogen is a little hard to come by since we don't have any advanced production for the electrolyzers and Sea water Fuel cells... We don't have many working options besides horses, dray animals, and gag me... Fossil Fuels. Even to old fresh fuel programs that pulled most of the the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, to make hydrocarbon fuel, is out of our reach. Anyway... I take out my trusty revolver, take goodness for the second renaissance, were people relearned how to make stuff the "hard way". I have one gross bullets, and some spare parts if I need them, enough to almost build a second gun. I'll have to hide Shocks, my horse, for the night. Hopefully I can find what I'm looking for and be gone by first light. There are other things to worry about out here. Like the birds. "Through shot an shell..." I go in. Wish me luck... Chris God damn... I'm still cold. I should enjoy that, I'm gonna miss that when it's gone. Winter doesn't look like a common thing around here. Hello, by the way, whoever's hearing this... I would have started recording earlier, but I just now started to be able to speak again. That's the thing about stasis, everything in your body literally goes to sleep. It's very weird having all those body parts without blood flowing. At least my vision's finally normalized... my hearing's probably come back, but... hard to tell. I'm still lightheaded, I heard that can last for up to two weeks, but hell, I'm an astronaut. I've nursed killer hangovers before. Unfortunately, the guys upstairs never put freeze-dried bloody marys into our kits. Okay, I've been thinking about this for a while, about why I'm here, the only circumstance I can think of was there was a radiation leak in the shuttle, and they couldn't retrieve our cryo-stasis chambers until the levels cleared out... but there's no radiation damage, no structural damage... it just looks like everything... stopped. And it's just sheer luck that rusted out pipe broke Mike's chamber glass, not mine. Lucky for him, I guess, he got spared all this. Though honestly, I wouldn't mind a little company. I just hope he didn't feel anything. You're not supposed to, at least. Jesus, I can't believe I climbed down that whole thing. Tore the shit outta this suit, but... I guess it doesn't really matter now, right? Hope the water filtration unit still works, at least, that might keep me alive long enough to find a river or stream. I didn't see any from the cockpit. Tangy reprocessed urine has to be better than slowly desiccating, right? Okay... where do I go? North... yeah, north. It should be colder up there, if there's water or people, that's where they'll be. Or at least some clues about what happened here. Maybe this is just it. Last human. Maybe some other form of life is getting ready to take our places. Jellyfish were taking over the oceans when I left... er, when I... whatever. Maybe there's just a pond of scum or an armoured snail or a big spider. I think I'd be happy to just meet them. I think I'd be okay just knowing something else would take over this dirt ball from us. All right, I have a long walk ahead of me and very little tape, so... until something comes up, this is the last surviving officer of the Olympic, signing off.